Government change is in the air. Avigdor Lieberman is making
it a central issue as he joins the government, and even Prime
Minister Olmert has accepted the principle that there should
be some change, although he has not accepted the changes that
Lieberman wants to make.
The ones calling for reform are, as usual, those who expect
to benefit from the reform. They are the politicians
currently in power. They argue that the governments that are
formed under the current system are unstable and short-lived,
and they want to introduce changes to promote less diversity
in the political system and more concentration of power, with
the aim of making the system more stable, which means to keep
them in power for longer periods and with fewer problems.
Avigdor Lieberman, who heads Yisrael Beiteinu — a right-
wing party with a large proportion of Russian supporters
— has made a detailed proposal for government change.
Although the overall package was rejected, if Lieberman
persists in pushing for it, there is a significant chance
that important parts may get enacted.
Lieberman's proposal is aptly called a "presidential" system.
Instead of the current system in which the Knesset is
supposed to have the main power, he would concentrate control
in the hands of a single chief executive. Whether he is
called the prime minister or the president is of course not
important. This chief will be able to appoint his cabinet
without needing anyone's approval, and he will be able to
dissolve the Knesset whenever he wants to. The current office
of the president will be eliminated, and all its powers
transferred to the new chief.
He claims to have modeled it after the system used in the
United States, but he seems to have chosen just the aspects
that give more power to the chief, without any of the checks
and balances that are so important a feature of the American
government system.
The direction of trying to concentrate more power with the
prime minister in order to strengthen and stabilize the
government was tried about fifteen years ago when the direct
election of the prime minister was introduced. At that time,
Maran HaRav Shach zt"l warned against that reform,
arguing that it would tend to produce little dictators who
would ignore the wishes of the people. Unfortunately, his
prediction proved all too accurate, and no one was satisfied
with the performance of the prime ministers who were elected
directly, and the original system was restored after only
three elections (which took place within about five
years).
The truth is that the politicians who repeatedly call for
governmental reform only criticize the process of government
— mainly the length of time the governments serve and
how hard it is to form a government. They do not address the
underlying issues: how representative of the people the
governments are, and how good the politicians are who
represent the people. And worst of all, they only criticize
the present and offer something different, but without any
convincing arguments that their difference will be any better
than what we already have.
The people of the State of Israel today are deeply divided
and made up of relatively small groups. The way to promote
larger political groupings is to promote more unity among the
people. This is the way a democratic government works: it
reflects the people. If the people are divided then this
should be reflected in their representatives, under
democracy. Logically, the way to promote more stability and
consensus in the representative government is to promote
these features within the people themselves.
This can most certainly be done, but we suspect that the deep
reason that it is not done is because the ruling elite does
not subscribe to the values and beliefs that are really the
greatest common denominator among the people in Israel. Study
after study shows that the people are more traditional and
more deeply connected to our common roots than the ruling
elites.
This brings us to the other prong of the solution: produce
better politicians. The poor performance of the government
should be blamed first on those who make up their membership.
If we could get better quality politicians, it stands to
reason that we would get better quality politics.
